Jury commissioner fight set to continue

WEST CHESTER – With passage last week of a bill reinstating the ability of county commissioners to vote to abolish the office of county jury commissioner, the stage is again set for a battle over whether the move is a proper cost-cutting move in a modern, computerized era, or a constitutional threat to fair trials.

On Wednesday, the state House of Representatives voted 156-39 to give the county commissioners the authority to do away with the jury commissioners’ office, as the Chester County board had done by a 2-1 vote last year, the move supported by the county republican commissioners and opposed by the county’s democratic commissioner.

The state Senate had passed the bill earlier this month by a 38-12 vote.

In both tallies, legislators with districts in Chester County were split on the issue. All the state representatives from the county voted in favor, with the exception of state Rep. Tim Hennessey, R-13th, of East Coventry, and state Rep. Duane Milne, R-167th, of Willistown.

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In the state Senate, the bill was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, whose 9th district encompasses past of southern Chester County, and his colleague, state Sen. Edwin Erickson, R-26th, of Drexel Hill, who represents residents of Thornbury. It was opposed by state Sen. John Rafferty, R-44th, of Pottstown and state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19th, of West Whiteland.

The bill has been sent to Gov. Tom Corbett for his approval, which is expected shortly.

The new law would make moot the decision of the state Supreme Court earlier this year to rule previous legislation giving the commissioners the authority to do away with the current jury commissioners’ offices unconstitutional. The court said that the law passed by the General Assembly in 2011 violated the Legislature’s rule against having one bill address two entirely different sets of issues.

Hailed by the head of the Chester County commissioners, Chairman Ryan Costello, the new law was criticized by representatives of the jury commissioners, including the attorney who won the court battle over the previous law, West Chester attorney Sam Stretton.

“It’s welcome news,” said Costello on Friday, although he compared the new law’s passage to the film “Groundhog Day,” as it represents “the same issue that keeps getting revisited.

“Hopefully the law gets signed, upheld, and we can realize savings for the county taxpayers by voting to once again abolish” the jury commissioners’ office. If Corbett signs the law, the commissioners will again debate the merits of doing away with the office and vote on such a move. It would be expected to pass once again in a split tally.

Costello said that he fully expected that the jury commissioners would attempt to block the law’s implementation in court and have it overturned, but predicted that it would pass constitutional muster. “It would seem to me that the law, if enacted and challenged, would be upheld, since the substance of it was upheld by the Commonwealth Court” in 2012.

The Pennsylvania Association of Jury Commissioners, on the other hand, blasted those who voted for the new law.

“The Legislature is attempting to reverse the way jurors are independently selected for jury trials; a system that has been effective for 145 years,” the group’s executive director, Larry Thompson, said in a press release.

“Instead of actively addressing bulging legislative pensions, embarrassing criminal convictions of fellow legislators, turnpike corruption and other such matters, our elected representatives caved to the lobbying pressure of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania and passed legislation to allow the elimination of the people’s over sight of the selection process for prospective jurors in their respective counties.”

Stretton, on Friday, said he was ready to file an action to block the law’s enactment as soon as Corbett pens his authorization.

“This is a judicial office they can’t abolish,” Stretton said in an interview from Harrisburg. “I believe we will be successful. The (Supreme) court has been very receptive to my argument.”

The county commissioners have contended that the jury commissioners have become outdated as a way of insuring fair selection of the large jury panels that gather weekly in Common Pleas courts across the state and from which individual juries are selected in criminal and civil cases.

In Chester County, the names of potential jurors are produced by a computer system that uses the county’s voter registration lists. The jury commissioners, according to a review by the county Court Administration Office at the behest of President Judge James P. MacElree II, have little to do with the actual selection of the panels, ruling on requests for excusal and welcoming the jurors to the courthouse.

The court administration office now does most of the work of assembling the jury pools, the study showed.

In November, Costello joined with fellow Republican Commissioner Terence Farrell to vote to abolish the offices – now held by one Republican and one Democrat. The move was opposed by Vice Chairwoman Kathi Cozzone, a Democrat.

Those who favor maintaining the current system say that abolishing the office will dent the integrity of trials in the state.

“If the jury selection process is turned over to court administrators, the public oversight will be non-existent,” Thompson said in his release. “These individuals are hired by and answer only to the president judge. They are totally isolated from the light of public scrutiny. The public’s trust in our judicial system would be in jeopardy of being lost.”

In its 2012 ruling upholding the law, the state Commonwealth Court said that the law did not improperly encroach on the judiciary’s independence, since the jury commissioners’ offices were set up by the Legislature itself and not the judiciary.

The offices are part of the executive branch of government, and not the judiciary, it determined.

Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court ruled this month that it would be proper for the state’s political parties to select candidates for the jury commissioner office that normally would be on the ballot this year.

The leaders of both parties in Chester County would likely assemble their committees to select candidates to appear on the November ballot, provided that the courts do not rule the new law abolishing the offices unconstitutional.